http://blog.realworldsystems.net Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:30:41 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I have spent years trying to get off the advertising mailing lists of both Bell Canada and Rogers, without success. I keep getting snail mail offering various services from both of them, and despite several calls and emails, neither Bell nor Rogers seem to have any idea how to deal with ... http://blog.realworldsystems.net/more_reasons_to_hate_rogers_and_bell_canada/ Many online music services are unavailable in Canada because of licensing restrictions (Pandora, Rhapsody, Spotify, Google’s new DiscoverMusic, etc.). For a while I was using last.fm but they recently began charging users outside the U.S. There are thousands of free internet radio stations that you can get through Screamer Radio, ... http://blog.realworldsystems.net/two_good_online_music_services_for_canadians/ Great news for open access research: A Harvard University Library news story updates the great news of the Harvard research community’s leadership of open access to scholarship through DASH. The release begins:September 1, 2009—Harvard’s leadership in open access to scholarship took a significant step forward this week with the public launch ... http://blog.realworldsystems.net/harvards_dash_for_open_access/ Terrific article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review on the unrecognized costs of organizational overhead - pointed out by Lori Criss Powers. A vicious cycle is leaving nonprofits so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let alone serve their beneficiaries. The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic ... http://blog.realworldsystems.net/the_nonprofit_starvation_cycle/ Lori Criss Powers pointed out McKinsey’s Capacity Assessment Grid, which is a very nice framework for thinking about nonprofit capacities in the areas of: Aspirations Strategy Organizational skills (including performance management, planning, fundraising etc) Human resources Systems and infrastructure Organizational structure Culture http://blog.realworldsystems.net/organizational_capacity_assessment_grid_for_nonprofits/ Interesting… From Feeling the Heat: The Effects of Performance Pressure on Teams' Knowledge Use and Performance  HBS Working Knowledge. Why do teams often fail to use their knowledge resources effectively even after they have correctly identified the experts among them? Project teams are a prominent feature of the knowledge-based economy, and ... http://blog.realworldsystems.net/the_effects_of_performance_pressure_on_teams_knowledge_use_and_performance/ Interesting… From The Magazine » How to Manage Outside Innovation « MIT Sloan Management Review. Should companies organize outside innovation through collaborative communities or competitive markets? Findings* Communities are useful when an innovation problem involves cumulative knowledge, continually building on past advances. Markets are effective when an innovation problem is best solved ... http://blog.realworldsystems.net/how_to_manage_outside_innovation_%c2%ab_mit_sloan_management_review/ Kanter’s law says, “Everything looks like a failure in the middle. Everyone loves inspiring beginnings and happy endings; it is just the middles that involve hard work.” Rosabeth Moss Kanter, the former editor of the Harvard Business Review, writes: I hit upon this law of management (and life) after observing hundreds ... http://blog.realworldsystems.net/change_is_hardest_in_the_middle/ Here’s a funny polemic against nonprofits, in a blog post at HarvardBusiness.org recommending that the US provide tax deductibility on  “products and services they buy from for-profit companies whose work have embedded social good”. His rationale? – It would open the door to social change to the most powerful economic force ... http://blog.realworldsystems.net/the_problem_with_nonprofits/ This article suggests ‘Potential Years of Life Lost’ as an important outcome indicator  in national healthcare systems  PYLL works like this: If a male lived to age 60, but average life expectancy was 69, 9 years of potential life would have been lost. PYLL is an interesting number to economists because it ... http://blog.realworldsystems.net/measuring_cost_effectiveness_in_national_healthcare_systems/